South Asia’s Christians
Between Hindu and Muslim
CHANDRA MALLAMPALLI
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mallampalli, Chandra, 1965– author.
Title: South Asia’s Christians : between Hindu and Muslim / Mallampalli, Chandra.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press, 2023. |
Series: Oxford studies in world Christianity | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifers: LCCN 2022032609 (print) | LCCN 2022032610 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190608910 (paperback) | ISBN 9780190608903 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190608934 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Christianity—South Asia. | South Asia—Church history. Classifcation: LCC BR1143 .M35 2023 (print) | LCC BR1143 (ebook) | DDC 275—dc23/eng/20221108
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022032609
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022032610
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190608903.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
For Robert Eric Frykenberg
1.
2. Jesuits and the Emperor Akbar, 1580–3
3.
4. Early
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List of Figures and Tables
Figure 1.1 Te Apostle Tomas distributes the treasure of King Gundaphar to the poor, with the recipient represented as an African. 21
Figure 1.2 Map of India, Persia, and Arabia. 25
Figure 2.1 Akbar in conversation with representatives of other religions.
41
Figure 2.2 Akbar’s visit to the Jesuits. 44
Figure 2.3 Akbar receives a deputation of Jesuits who give him a Bible as a gif, 1576.
Figure 3.1 Francis Xavier calls the children of Goa to church, 1542.
Figure 3.2 A shrine to Francis Xavier, garlanded in the manner of a Hindu shrine.
Figure 4.1 Map of the Indian Ocean.
52
66
72
91
Figure 4.2 Te Legendary Prester John in an engraving by Luca Ciamberlano, c.1599. 93
Figure 4.3 Sketch of the Portuguese arrival in India.
Figure 5.1 Baptist mission premises at Serampore, 1812.
Figure 5.2 Carey’s Bengali translation of the New Testament.
Figure 6.1 “Pandita Ramabai & her gifed daughter Manoramabai,” undated.
Figure 7.1 Indigenous preachers with villagers in Medapalli, c.1885–95.
Figure 7.2 Map of northeast India.
Figure 8.1 Te American missionary and doctor Ida Scudder with Gandhi.
Figure 8.2 Gandhi and Jinnah having a diference of opinion.
Figure 8.3 Map showing the partition of India.
Figure 8.4 An image depicting the new Christian identity of Chuhras.
Figure 9.1 Jesus and the Cosmic Drum by Jyoti Sahi.
Figure 9.2 Jesus the Dalit Man of Sorrows by Jyoti Sahi.
Table 0.1 Christian populations in South Asia.
Table 10.1 Pentecostals/Charismatics in India 1970–2020.
96
124
125
154
169
173
190
198
200
202
230
233
4
250
Introducing the Oxford Series
Lamin Sanneh
Among the many breathtaking developments in the post-World War II and the subsequent postcolonial eras, few are more striking than the worldwide Christian resurgence. With unfagging momentum, Christianity has become, or is fast becoming, the principal religion of the peoples of the world. Primal societies that once stood well outside the main orbit of the faith have become major centers of Christian impact, while Europe and North America, once considered the religion’s heartlands, are in noticeable recession. We seem to be in the middle of massive cultural shifs and realignments whose implications are only now beginning to become clear. Aware that Europe’s energies at the time were absorbed in war, Archbishop William Temple presciently observed in 1944 that this global feature of the religion was “the new fact of our time.” An impressive picture now meets our eyes: the growing numbers and the geographical scope of that growth, the cross-cultural patterns of encounter, the variety and diversity of cultures affected, the structural and antistructural nature of the changes involved, the kaleidoscope of cultures ofen manifested in familiar and unfamiliar variations on the canon, the wide spectrum of theological views and ecclesiastical traditions represented, the ideas of authority and styles of leadership that have been developed, the process of acute indigenization that fosters liturgical renewal, the production of new religious art, music, hymns, songs, and prayers—all these are part of Christianity’s stunningly diverse profle.
Tese unprecedented developments cast a revealing light on the serial nature of Christian origins, expansion, and subsequent attrition. Tey ft into the cycles of retreat and advance, of contraction and expansion, and of waning and awakening that have characterized the religion since its birth, though they are now revealed to us with particular force. Te pattern of contrasting development is occurring simultaneously in various societies across the world. Te religion is now in the twilight of its Western phase and at the beginning of its formative non-Western impact. Christianity has not ceased to be a Western religion, but its future as a world religion is now being formed and shaped at the hands and in the minds of its non-Western adherents. Rather than a cause for unsettling gloom, for Christians this new situation is a reason for guarded hope.
Today students of the subject can stand in the middle of the recession of Christianity in its accustomed heartland while witnessing its resurgence in areas
long considered receding missionary lands, but that is the situation today. In 1950 some 80 percent of the world’s Christians lived in the northern hemisphere in Europe and North America. By 2005 the vast majority of Christians lived in the southern hemisphere in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In 1900 at the outset of colonial rule there were just under nine million Christians in Africa, of whom the vast majority were Ethiopian Orthodox or Coptic. In 1960, at the end of the colonial period the number of Christians had increased to about sixty million, with Catholics and Protestants making up ffy million, and the other ten million divided between the Ethiopian Orthodox and Coptic churches. By 2005, the African Christian population had increased to roughly 393 million, which is just below 50 percent of Africa’s population.
It is estimated that there are just over two billion Christians worldwide, making Christianity among the world’s fastest growing religions. In terms of the languages and ethnic groups afected, as well as the variety of churches and movements involved, Christianity is also the most diverse and pluralist religion in the world. More people pray and worship in more languages and with more diferences in styles of worship in Christianity than in any other religion. Well over 2,000 of the world’s languages are embraced by Christianity through Bible translation, prayer, liturgy, hymns, and literature. Over 90 percent of the languages have a grammar and a dictionary at all only because the Western missionary movement provided them, thus pioneering the largest, most diverse, and most vigorous movement of cultural renewal in history. At the same time, the post-Western Christian resurgence is occurring in societies already set in currents of indigenous religious pluralism. In addition to frsthand familiarity with at least one other religion, most new Christians speak at the minimum two languages. It is not the way a Christian in the secular West has been used to looking at the religion, but it is now the only way.
Increasingly and in growing numbers, Tird World churches are appearing in the towns and cities of the West, while Tird World missionaries are also arriving to serve in churches in Europe and North America. Tis suggests the commencement of the process of the re-evangelization of a secularized West by orthodox Christians of former missionized countries. It is sobering to refect on the implications and political impact of such a sharp cultural encounter. Te empty churches of the West are being flled with mounting numbers of non-Western Christians whose orthodox religious views will pose a radical challenge to the secular liberal status quo, while institutions of liberal theological education are busy redefning themselves to preempt a cultural collision with the post-Western Christian resurgence. Orthodox Christian groups in the West are meanwhile positioning themselves to efect a complex strategic alliance with the new resurgence.
Mainline denominations have already felt the force of this shif. In the Roman Catholic Church the structural adjustment of Vatican II has allowed the new
wind of change to sweep through the church (if at times it has been impeded), producing movements in several diferent directions and across the world. Te New Catholic Catechism refects the change in language, mood, and style, and the rapid creation of bishops and cardinals in the non-Western church, accompanied by a steady stream of papal encyclicals, testifes to the fresh momentum of post-Western Christianity. Te papacy has been not only an observer of the change but also an active promoter of it, and, in the particular case of Pius XII, the source of a well-tempered preparation for it. Similarly, churches and denominations comprised in the Protestant ecumenical movement have felt jostled in unexpected, uncomfortable ways by the sudden entrance into their ranks of new Tird World churches. Te worldwide Anglican Communion has been reeling under pressure from the organized and concerted Tird World reaction to the consecration and installation of a practicing gay bishop by the Episcopal Church USA. Te other Protestant churches with sizable Tird World memberships have paused to refect on the implications for them of such a culture clash. Not since the Reformation has there been such a shake-up of authority in the Western church, with unrehearsed implications for the West’s cultural preeminence.
In the meantime, the number of mainline Protestant missionaries is decreasing, while Evangelical missionary numbers are increasing steadily, complemented by a rising tide of African, Asian, and other Tird World missionaries, including more than 10,000 from South Korea alone. In 1950, Christians in South Korea numbered barely half a million; by 2007, they numbered some thirteen million, and are among the most prosperous and mobile of people anywhere. It is likely that churches in South Korea rather than churches in the West will play a key role on the new Christian frontier about to open in China, which might well become a dominant axis of the religion, with hard-to-imagine implications for the rest of the world.
Tese facts and developments aford a unique opportunity and challenge for cross-cultural study of the asymmetry of the turnover and serial impact of Christianity, where a dip here is followed by a bounce there. Te intersection of the path of decline in the West with the upward swing of momentum of postWestern Christianity makes the subject a compelling and deeply rewarding one for comparative study and critical refection.
Te new reality brought about by the shif in the center of gravity of Christianity from the northern to the southern hemisphere provides the context for the volumes in this series, which are designed to bring the fruits of new research and refection to the attention of the educated, non-specialist reader. Te frst volume ofers a panoramic survey of the feld, exploring the sources to uncover the nature and scope of Christianity’s worldwide multicultural impact. Te agents, methods, and means of expansion will be investigated closely
in order to clarify the pattern and forms as well as issues of appropriation and inculturation. Te cultural anticipations that allowed the religion to take root in diverse settings under vastly diferent historical and political circumstances will be assessed for how they shaped the reception of Christianity. Similarly, Christianity’s intercontinental range as well as its encounter with other religions, including Islam, elicited challenges for the religion in the course of its worldwide expansion. Tese challenges will be examined.
Te subsequent volumes will be devoted to specifc themes and regions within the general subject of Christianity’s development as a world religion. While each volume is conceived and written individually, together the volumes are united in their focus on post-Western developments in Christianity and in the elaborations, variations, continuities, and divergences with the originating Western forms of the religion.
Preface
Tis book is the product of decades of engagement with the history of Christianity in South Asia. I wrote it at the behest of Professor Lamin Sanneh as the South Asia contribution to his edited Oxford Series on World Christianity. Sanneh wanted a volume that targets an educated general audience more than specialists in the feld. He also mentioned that the book should engage timely questions relating to Christian experience in South Asia. South Asia’s Christians discusses issues arising from Syrian, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Christianity and draws from a wider literature on South Asian history. In accordance with Sanneh’s vision, I trust that the book will be of interest to many audiences and that readers will fnd that its thematic focus on interreligious encounters provides a captivating lens for examining Christians. Sanneh’s untimely death in 2019 prevented him from seeing this contribution to his series; but hopefully my engagement with his ideas in several chapters will duly honor his immense contributions to the study of World Christianity and the development of my own research and refection.
Research for this book was made possible by funds from the Fletcher Jones Foundation Chair at Westmont College. I am also grateful to Harvard Divinity School for appointing me a Yang Visiting Scholar of World Christianity during the 2021–2 academic year. Conversations with scholars at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions and with students in my seminars have helped me refne the arguments and angles adopted in these chapters. I am grateful for the supportive staf at Harvard’s Divinity School, Lamont, and Widener Libraries. A collaboration grant from the Consortium of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) ofered additional support for research. I thank Pepperdine University’s Dyron Daughrity for his energetic partnership in the CCCU grant project.
Many notable scholars of South Asia deserve my sincerest thanks for taking time from their demanding schedules to read and comment on chapters of this book. Tese include Benjamin Cohen, Deepra Dandekar, Richard Eaton, Joel Lee, Joy Pachuau, Prasannan Parthasarathi, Nathaniel Roberts, John Webster, Felix Wilfred, and Richard Young. I am grateful to the readers for Oxford University Press for their hugely helpful feedback. A hearty thanks is owed to Judith Forshaw for her meticulous copyediting of this text and to Teo Calderara and Chelsea Hogue for managing the production of the book so efciently. Felix Wilfred and Patrick Gnana hosted stimulating conversations at Chennai
relating to Asian Christianity, which inspired many aspects of this project. Gudrun Lowner assisted me in acquiring illustrations. Tree research assistants at Westmont College—Kyndal Vogt, Addie Michaelian, and Carolyn Deal— provided valuable assistance. A research scholar at Harvard, Akhil Tomas, assisted me with photographs and maps. My colleagues in the history department at Westmont College supported my leave to complete this book and deserve my sincerest thanks. Our ofce secretary, Ruby Jeanne Shelton, has been a constant source of support and assistance over many years.
Tis book is dedicated to Robert Eric Frykenberg. He deserves credit like none other for bridging the study of Christian conversion in India, the history of modern India, and the burgeoning feld of World Christianity. While a graduate student at University of Wisconsin–Madison, I served as Frykenberg’s research assistant for his project “Christianity in India Since 1500.” Te project introduced me to scholars who made outstanding contributions to the feld: Michael Bergunder, Jefrey Cox, John Carman, Susan Billington Harper, Dennis Hudson, Indira Peterson, Geofrey Oddie, John Webster, Richard Young, and many others. I am also grateful to Frykenberg for introducing me as a graduate student to other pioneers of the study of World Christianity such as Lamin Sanneh, Andrew Walls, Dana Robert, and Brian Stanley. Te study of South Asian Christianity is currently being advanced by cutting edge scholarship at the highest levels, much of which has worked its way into these pages.
Introduction
On a balmy evening in the north Indian city of Jaipur, my students and I were enjoying the view of this historic Rajput city from a hotel roofop. I chose this venue for my lecture on “India Afer Independence (1947).” How would the government of this young nation hold such a large and diverse population together— Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and Buddhists, not to mention diferences of language, caste, and region? Was this project destined for failure or would India provide a great lesson for the rest of the world about accommodating diversity? Seventy years into India’s life as an independent nation, such questions continue to weigh heavily on the minds of many. A surge in religious nationalism and heightened minority vulnerability threaten the very foundations of India’s democracy. As I lectured, I tried to address the gravity of the situation while taking in the richness of our surroundings.
Across the city, we could hear the devotional practices of India’s two dominant religious traditions. From the minarets of Jaipur’s mosques, evening calls to prayer (azaan) declared the greatness of Allah and the tenets of the Muslim faith contained in the Kalimahs (concise Islamic creeds). As they radiated throughout the city, the recitations of azaan seemed to merge into a single austere chorus carrying some variations of intonation and volume. Against this steady hum, Hindus celebrated their festival of Dussehra, which in Jaipur commemorates events in the Hindu epic Ramayana. Te divine king Rama slays the ten-headed demon king Ravana, who abducted Sita, Rama’s wife. Tese events are celebrated with great pomp through dramatic reenactments (Ram Leela) of Rama’s triumph. Tey culminate in the burning of efgies of Rama’s enemies and the explosion of frecrackers.
It eventually occurred to me that I should stop lecturing and simply let the streets of Jaipur do the talking. What could my academic voice possibly add to this moment when local residents were making their faith traditions so audible? Te longstanding coexistence and shared experiences of Hindus and Muslims are among the greatest legacies of the Indian subcontinent and make India such a fascinating place to study. At the same time, one cannot ignore how this interwoven heritage eventually came undone. Under British rule, rising polarization and antipathy between Hindus and Muslims led to competing demands for territory and infuence and eruptions of violence. Tese developments led ultimately to the bloodstained partitioning of the subcontinent, which produced
the separate states of India and Pakistan. As the sounds of azaan merged with those of Dussehra, they called forth two histories—one of interreligious coexistence, the other of communal discord and violence. Which one would prevail?
Had I completed my lecture on that roofop, I would have drawn attention to a third religious community numbering far fewer than Hindus and Muslims, but adding a vital component to the subcontinent’s history. South Asia’s Christians, the main subjects of this book, have profoundly shaped and been shaped by the Hindu and Muslim environments in which they thrived. Te cross-cultural and interreligious interactions of these Christians are the most defning feature of their history and form the heart of what this book is about. Te three main Christian traditions of South Asia—Syrian Christian, Roman Catholic, and Protestant—have participated in the region’s diverse social tapestry in various ways. At times, Christian interaction involved overt hostility toward Hindus and Muslims, as in the case of the Portuguese in western India during the sixteenth century. Converting others within this colonial context consisted of extracting souls from their original cultural milieu and assimilating them into a community of foreigners. Tis colonial model, however, is neither the only nor the dominant form of Christian engagement in South Asia.
South Asian Christianity could never be confned to a tiny community of foreigners. Its trajectory was always marked by migratory and boundarycrossing tendencies. Te Tomas Christians of the south Indian state of Kerala trace their origins to the missionary endeavors of Jesus’s apostle Tomas. Tese Christians predate by centuries the arrival of Muslims and Europeans to the subcontinent. Te Tomas Christians (later called Syrian Christians) were not agents of imperialism but victims of it, frst under the Portuguese, then under the British. Tomas Christian communities were deeply rooted in a landscape shared with Hindus and Muslims. Te same co-participation can be observed in many Roman Catholic and Protestant communities. Foreign missionaries may have laid the groundwork for their emergence, but there came a point when local actors, practices, and beliefs played more important roles in the lives of Christian congregations. What was originally a missionary religion eventually rooted itself within local contexts, ofen in forms that were quite diferent from those the missionaries had anticipated. Indeed, a recurring theme of this book is the huge gap between missionary expectations and the forms of Christianity that ultimately prevailed in South Asia.
Tis story of a global religion becoming local is not unique to South Asia’s Christians. It is part of a much larger transformation of the world’s Christian population from being almost entirely European or North American to being predominantly African, Asian, or Latin American. Over the past several decades, surging Christian numbers in the Global South have taken the spotlight away from the historically dominant—but now declining—Christian presence
in Western nations. Tis “demographic shif” has given rise to new centers of Christian vitality and a changing ethnic complexion of the Church.1 A relatively silent element in discussions of this emerging World Christianity, however, is South Asia. Why would a region totaling a quarter of the world’s population be so easily overlooked?
A huge factor relates to a preoccupation with Christian numbers. Roughly thirty African nations now have Christian majorities; and countries such as Brazil, Argentina, and South Korea are notable for their megachurches and rapid Christian growth. Quite understandably, they factor prominently in World Christianity literature. In South Asian countries, Christians comprise a small percentage of the population (see Table 0.1), but their stories teach us vital lessons about interreligious encounters and the experiences of marginal people such as Dalits (formerly called “untouchables”) and tribals—themes that factor prominently in these chapters.
Te term “South Asia” refers to the southern region of Asia. It consists of the Indian subcontinent, lands that extend westward toward Afghanistan, those located south of today’s border with China, and those extending east toward Myanmar. Today, it includes the nation-states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. Tis book tells stories arising from many South Asian contexts, but mostly from what is now called India, and includes time periods that precede the drawing of national borders.
With a population of 1.4 billion, India, the largest nation of South Asia, captures attention as the world’s largest democracy and as a nation experiencing rapid growth in certain sectors of its economy. Far less attention is paid to its Christians, who account for less than 3 percent of its population. Images of South Asian Christians that ofen circulate in global media are those of a beleaguered minority sufering violence at the hands of militants, whether under blasphemy laws in Muslim-majority states or by Hindu extremists who oppose Christian conversions.
Paradoxically, the growth of Christianity in the Global South has coincided in India with the rise of militant Hindu nationalism. For decades, a coalition of organizations known as the Sangh Parivar (or Safron Brotherhood) has advanced its agenda of Hindutva—literally, the pursuit of Hindu-ness in all aspects of national life. Te Hindutva agenda has placed India’s secular democracy under severe stress and has heightened the vulnerability of many Christians and Muslims. Te Sangh Parivar portrays adherents of these two religions as non-Indian or foreign, despite centuries of integration into the cultural fabric of the subcontinent. Hindu nationalists have long portrayed Christian conversion as an act of deracination and denationalization. Tey have introduced anti-conversion laws in several states and have launched campaigns to reconvert Christians and Muslims to Hinduism.2
Table 0.1 Christian populations in South Asia.
Note: Tese fgures are drawn from ofcial census reports of the respective governments and relevant databases from 2010 to the present.*
*“Religion Census 2011,” All India Religion Census Data, https://www.census2011.co.in/religion. php; “C-1 Population by Religious Community: 2011,” Ofce of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, Ministry of Home Afairs, Government of India, https://www.censusindia.gov.in/201 1census/C-01/DDW00C-01%20MDDS.XLS; “2018 Report on International Religious Freedom: Sri Lanka,” p. 2, US Department of State, Ofce of International Religious Freedom, https://www.state. gov/ wp- cont ent/ uplo ads/ 2019/ 05/ SRI- LANKA- 2018- INTERNATIO NAL- RELIGI OUS- FREE DOM-REPORT.pdf; “Census of Population and Housing: 2012. Religion,” Department of Census and Statistics, Sri Lanka, http://www.statistics.gov.lk/PopHouSat/CPH2012Visualization/htdocs/ index.php?usecase=indicator&action=Map&indId=10&Legend=2; “Age–Sex Composition of Bangladesh Population. Population Monogram: Volume 9,” p. 28, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (2015), http://203.112.218.65:8008/WebTestApplication/userfles/Image/PopMonographs/Volume9_Age-Sex.pdf; “Population by Religion,” p. 1, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (2017), https://www. pbs.gov.pk/sites/default/fles//tables/POPULATION%20BY%20RELIGION.pdf; “2018 Report on International Religious Freedom: Pakistan,” p. 4, US Department of State, Ofce of International Religious Freedom, https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/PAKISTAN-2018INTERNATIONAL-RELIGIOUS-FREEDOM-REPORT.pdf; “Te 2014 Myanmar Population and Housing Census. Te Union Report: Religion. Census Report Volume 2-C,” p. 3, Department of Population, Ministry of Labor, Immigration and Population, https://myanmar.unfpa.org/sites/defa ult/fles/pub-pdf/UNION 2C_Religion EN.pdf; “National Population and Housing Census 2011,” p. 4, National Planning Commission Secretariat, Central Bureau of Statistics, Government of Nepal, https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/sources/census/wphc/Nepal/Nepal-Census-2011-Vol1. pdf. Te US State Department lists the total Christian population of Bhutan as between 8,000 and 30,000; Open Doors USA lists the number of Christians as 30,000 and 3.6 percent of the total population; a 2010 Pew Research report lists the percentage of Christians as 0.5 percent. “2019 Report on International Religious Freedom: Bhutan,” p. 2, US Department of State, Ofce of International Religious Freedom, https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/BHUTAN-2019-INTERN ATIONAL-RELIGIOUS-FREEDOM-REPORT.pdf; “Table: Religious Composition by Religion by Country,” p. 1, Pew Research (2010), https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/ 2012/12/globalReligion-tables.pdf
At stake in this crucial moment of India’s history is the very future of an eclectic and integrative political life symbolized in the mahachakra (the “great wheel,” also known as the dharmachakra, the “wheel of dharma” or righteous order) found on the fag of India. Te spokes of the wheel attach the center of
political authority to diverse communities through reciprocal bonds of allegiance and trust. Historically, such bonds have integrated communities of various creeds, castes, and languages into overarching political systems. India’s secular, liberal democracy, with its protections for religious minorities, may be viewed as the most recent iteration of the mahachakra. Will this democracy survive or will it give way to an agenda keen on eradicating dissent and diversity? Tis book locates Christians within this multifaceted, interactive history. It does so against nationalistic currents that are advancing the Hindutva agenda and its alternative reading of the past.3
Locating South Asia’s Christians
Between Sanskritic, Persianate, and Arabic Worlds
An important factor that distinguishes South Asian from African or Latin American Christianity is the overarching infuence of three classical languages— Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic—which connected India to Arabia, Persia and Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. In ancient times, a Sanskrit-based courtly culture expanded from India to the elite circles of Burma, the Khmer country, and the plains of Java. Epic Sanskrit literature such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata and puranic texts contained stories that spread through a variety of media.4 Popular devotional movements in India (or bhakti movements) sometimes absorbed and sometimes resisted the infuence of Sanskrit.
During the eighth century, Islam reached the shores of western India through trade. Later, Turko-Mongol rulers known as the Mughals would employ Persian as their administrative language. Itinerant orders of Muslims, known as Sufs, propagated their mystical and populist variety of Islam in India, producing a rich corpus of prayers, songs, poetry, and literature in Persian. Te arrival of Islam accelerated the difusion of Persianate and Arabic traditions in South and Southeast Asia, and these intersected with networks of Sanskritic infuence. Te Muslim communities that dotted India’s west coast prayed in the direction of Mecca and recited the Qur’an in Arabic.5 Many Muslims of South Asia speak Urdu, a language related to Hindi but written with the Persian script and deriving many words from Persian and Arabic.
Over time, Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian would form the basis of elite traditions commonly referred to as “Hindu” and “Muslim.” Such religious labels, however, can be misleading. Te classical languages had spread to diferent regions of Asia well before there were clearly established Hindu and Muslim “communities” to speak of. By the nineteenth century, Persian and Arabic became more strongly associated with Islam and Sanskrit with Hinduism. And yet,
for much of the subcontinent’s history, these languages drew people of diverse backgrounds into dynamic and creative encounters with each other and ofen enriched South Asia’s many vernacular languages.
What Is “Interaction”?
As Christianity took root in South Asia, a robust interaction with Sanskritic, Persianate, and Arabic traditions followed. Te term “interaction” can refer to many types of encounters between Christians and others. One might be inclined to think of interaction purely as dialogue, and dialogue as a conversation between two or more equal parties. For the purposes of this book, interaction is dialogical, but it does not presume equality, agreement, or mutual understanding. Te following chapters showcase three domains of interaction: knowledge production, debate, and conversion. European writings (knowledge production) about Hindus and Muslims are discussed in Chapter 4 as instances of interaction that had far-reaching implications. Tey arose from attempts to grapple with the otherness of South Asian society and ofen involved the input of local informers. At the same time, they ofen reveal misunderstandings arising from prejudice, preconceived notions, and imperial interests. Apologetic encounters or debates between Christians and others are discussed in Chapter 5 as events that transformed identities. Tese exchanges are more easily recognized as interactive, however contentious and lopsided they ofen were. Conversion is rarely recognized as a form of interaction: It tends to be seen as a form of extraction (from one community into another). Chapters 6 and 7 describe the very real sense in which both individual and mass conversions became sites of interaction between old and new ideas, practices, and relationships.
What we fnd in South Asia is a rather poignant separation of the knowledgeproducing legacy of Christian missionaries from that of actual conversion. Missionaries amassed information about “other religions” hoping to convert elites to their faith and thereby infuence the masses. It was not the elites, however, who converted, but mostly marginalized Dalit and tribal peoples, largely independent of the knowledge systems produced by missionaries.6 Tis dynamic is captured by a metaphor involving soda bottles. In the playgrounds of days past, people cast rings onto a cluster of soda bottles in hopes of landing as many rings as possible onto one bottleneck or another. Most rings, however, landed on the ground. Te bottles are religions—Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and others—while the displaced rings are subaltern (non-elite) people who were not accommodated by any particular bottle.7 Missionaries and their South Asian interlocutors played an important role in shaping “the bottles” through scholarship and printed books, interreligious debates, and pamphlet wars. As much
as these “religions” competed for the allegiance of Dalits, it was never easy to locate Dalits within any given religious community. Tey ofen absorbed elements of multiple traditions and were not readily admitted or shaped by any particular community. Tis sense of identity limbo—sometimes described by terms such as hybridity, fuidity, or syncretism—is not eradicated upon conversion to Christianity, but is an enduring aspect of the experience of oppressed and marginalized peoples.8
One factor that may explain this rif between missionary knowledge and conversion is literacy. Te small social networks in which printed Christian knowledge circulated or public religious debates were staged were far removed from the illiterate masses who ended up comprising the vast majority of South Asia’s Christians. Te masses became Christian largely through their own initiatives, in response to indigenous catechists who conveyed biblical teachings to them orally. Tese Christian converts are marginal to Hindu and Muslim communities, but, as discussed in Chapters 9 and 10, they are also marginal to many established Christian communities despite their conversion.
Te Tomas Christians and Persian Christianity
Te Tomas Christians are the only Christians of India whose origins cannot be linked in any way to European infuence. Tey trace their origins to Jesus’s apostle Tomas, who they believe visited India in 52 ce and established a church there. Some aspects of the Tomas tradition can be linked to an ancient text known as Te Acts of Tomas, which describes the apostle’s missionary endeavors in India. From the third century on, through trade, migration, and exchanges of ecclesiastical personnel, the lives of the Tomas Christians and Persian Christians became intertwined. Gradually, the Tomas Christians fell under the oversight of the Church of the East, whose capital was at Sasanian Ctesiphon.
Te ties of Tomas Christians to the Church of the East did not make them any less anchored in south Indian society. Chapter 1 describes how their interactions with Persian Christians went hand in hand with their rootedness in local traditions. In fact, these Christian encounters between South Asia and West Asia foreshadow a more extensive Indo-Persian mingling that unfolded during the era of Islamic expansion. As a community that lived along India’s Malabar Coast (southwest India), the Tomas Christians were involved through trade and religion with societies on the other side of the Arabian Sea. Teir engagement with the peoples of West Asia accompanied their coexistence with Hindu and Muslim neighbors in the coastal region of southwest India now called Kerala—a dual participation that continues to the present day.
Catholic Interactions
As European Christians navigated the world of the Indian Ocean, experiences of their recent past shaped their perceptions of Hindus and Muslims in India. Back home on the Iberian Peninsula, the Catholic Inquisition had led the Church to confront heretics and purge their lands of Jews and Muslims. Portuguese Catholics introduced the same Inquisition in Goa in 1560 in order to advance their faith and justify violence and discrimination against Hindus and Muslims.
Te Jesuit missions to the court of the Mughal emperor Jalal al-Din Muhammad Akbar (1542–1605), the topic of Chapter 2, provide the earliest and most detailed accounts of European encounters with the Mughals (the Islamicate Empire that ruled India for several centuries). Jesuit priests learned Persian in order to communicate not only with Akbar, but also with his courtiers and resident clerics. Teir ultimate aim was to persuade the emperor to embrace Christianity, but their attacks on the Qur’an earned them the fury of Muslims residing at Akbar’s court. Te emperor himself, known for his religious tolerance, restrained these Muslims from beating the Jesuits when they insulted the Prophet Muhammad. But how far would his tolerance extend? Lengthy conversations that never resulted in Akbar’s conversion ultimately disappointed the Jesuits. Still, they lef behind a revealing account of their exchanges within this Indo-Persian domain.
Roman Catholics would adopt various strategies for advancing their faith and establishing a lasting presence in south India. Chapter 3 describes how Catholics became incorporated into a cultural fabric shared with Hindus and Muslims. At times, it was the patronage of local kings that made their integration into Indian society possible. In other instances, Catholics employed a deliberate strategy of cultural accommodation made famous by the Italian Jesuit Roberto de Nobili (1577–1656). What we fnd in the history of Catholicism, however, are instances of blending in as well as those of diferentiation—patterns observable across many traditions of South Asia.
Protestant Interactions
Protestants shared with Jesuits a commitment to accumulating knowledge about other religions for missionary purposes. Tis sometimes led to the belief that they could win converts by winning arguments. During the seventeenth century, when Europeans gained access to the lucrative trade of the Indian Ocean, Protestant chaplains and travelers devoted themselves to studying Hindu traditions and documenting their fndings. Chapter 4 describes how commerce and colonialism opened doors for Europeans—from the Leiden-trained
Abraham Rogerius to the German Pietist Bartholomeus Ziegenbalg—to examine Indian religions from the standpoint of their Christian beliefs. Ziegenbalg’s Tranquebar mission lef a lasting impact not only on Indian converts, but also on the experiences of Christian indentured laborers who migrated to the plantations of Burma, Penang, or Singapore.
During the following century, British missionaries assumed the roles as knowledge producers and translators of scripture. William Carey (1761–1834), the English Baptist missionary and professor of Sanskrit, was ardently committed to Bible translation and linguistics. Carey and successive missionaries collected manuscripts, translated the Bible into Sanskrit and several spoken languages, composed dictionaries and grammars, produced ethnographies, and wrote extensively about the beliefs and cultural practices of Indians. Te Anglican missionary Henry Martyn (1781–1812) produced translations of the scriptures in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. Based on his experiences in Iran and India, he produced his Controversial Tracts on Christianity and Mohammedanism (published in 1824). Tese were widely read by learned Muslims (members of the ulama) in India and laid the foundations for debates between Christians and Muslims. Scottish Evangelicals such as Alexander Duf (1806–78) and John Wilson (1804–75) believed in combining education with evangelism to infuence the upper castes of Bombay and Calcutta.
Despite the heavy emphasis Europeans placed on knowledge and argumentation, their eforts to convert the elites to Christianity were largely unsuccessful. More ofen, they helped solidify Hindu, Muslim, Parsi, and Jewish identities and inclined members of these traditions to repudiate Christianity. Chapters 5 and 6 draw attention to missionary endeavors among the elites, which involved strident defenses of the Bible and refutations of other sacred texts. Converts from upper castes were few and far between, but they ofen drew praise or ostracism in the public sphere. Te life of the high caste Hindu convert Pandita Ramabai Dongre (1858–1922) illustrates how a Brahmin convert could gain notoriety across global Christian networks while being shunned by Hindu elites in western India for her conversion.
Dalit and Tribal Experience
Most converts to Christianity came from social classes who were far less learned than Ramabai and her Maratha Brahmin compatriots. Tey came from Dalit and tribal communities, who tended to live on the margins of Sanskritic, Arabic, and Persianate high traditions. Dalits fell beneath and beyond the four main rankings (or varnas) of Hindu society. Upper castes considered Dalits to be “polluted” and forced them to live in separate neighborhoods. Dalit hereditary occupations
